


Head Cannon

by shadydave



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Concussion Protocols: A Star Wars Story, Fix-It, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-16
Updated: 2018-01-16
Packaged: 2019-03-05 12:43:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13388040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadydave/pseuds/shadydave
Summary: You take responsibility for your actions if you’re in the Resistance, even if those actions are, you know, mutiny. “There’s—”Okay,There’s nothing wrong with meis clearly not accurate.





	Head Cannon

“I need your advice, Poe,” says Leia.

It’s quiet on the _Falcon_ – at least, when Poe’s not hearing blaster fire, artillery bursts, the blast of a battering ram cannon; echoes, half-startling him from his seat. 

Everyone else has settled down. BB-8 had spent a delirious half hour telling him about his jailbreak, grand theft, and AT-ST joyride (Poe is so proud, he could burst) before plugging into a charging station and powering down. Finn is awkwardly slumped next to Rose Tico’s bunk, the data pad with her vitals still clutched in one hand. There’s a horrible snoring coming from one of the smuggling holds which is either Chewbacca or the last Jedi. Connix volunteered to stand watch with him; he told her he’d wake her if she was needed, so she’s curled up in one of the rear cockpit seats. D’acy’s passed out in the other, using Salty as a footrest. Their wounded are in the bunks; pretty much everyone else had pulled up a piece of decking and crashed, and honestly, he’s impressed Leia was able to get into the cockpit without stepping on anyone. 

She sits on the edge of the co-pilot’s seat; there are two porgs cuddled together against the backrest. Poe has been alternating between staring at them, staring at the computer displays, and staring at the star tunnels of hyperspace, not thinking about anything except navigating them safely through it.

He can fly anything. It’s what he’s good at.

“Shouldn’t you be resting?” he asks.

The smirk that pulls at her lips is more bitter than usual. She doesn't aim it at him, though. 

“Shouldn’t you?” she asks.

“Someone’s got to stay awake and fly the ship,” he says. “What can I do for you, General?”

She hands him a data pad; it’s a med file, name concealed for privacy. Poe scans it and winces.

The fatigue and elevated cortisol levels are worrying, but given the current conditions, unfortunately not out of the ordinary. Their general physical is – okay. Banged up a bit, but functional, nothing a few minor pain meds can’t handle.

With one notable exception.

“I’m don’t know much more than field medicine, but even I can tell that human brain scans aren’t supposed to have so many exciting colors,” he says. 

He pulls up the linked list of symptoms and side effects and winces again. “You shouldn't let them near combat,” says Poe. “They’ll just get others, and then themselves, killed. I’d say they should be on total medical leave, but… we’re a little short-handed.”

“We are now,” says Leia steadily. “But it would have been manageable last week, when I should have made that decision.”

He stares at her for a moment, then slowly keys open the identification number on the pad.

COMMANDER POE DAMERON, it says, above his Republic serial number and the ID picture Yolo had stolen and plastered all over fake Resistance recruitment posters.

“I’m…” he says. He shakes his head. Ow. “I’m fine. If it’s been a week—”

“I had a similar report last week,” says Leia. “ _This_ was done while you were unconscious on the transport shuttle.”

“Oh,” he says. 

He stares at the brain scan again. PERSISTING GRADE THREE TRAUMATIC INJURY, it says.

That’s… probably not good.

Dr. Kalonia had been her usual sardonic self when they’d dragged him into the med bay after Jakku. He thought she’d been joking when she said he should stay there under observation for the foreseeable future. There was a follow-up report – probably the same one Leia got – but he hadn’t bothered to read it beyond confirming his coordination and reaction times were flight-ready.

It’s not like he hadn’t known something was wrong – the headaches, the nausea. The sudden explosions of noise with no source that no one else heard. The nightmares, where he’d wake up strapped down back in that torture chamber, a looming figure in a black mask lurking in the shadows, just waiting for the chance to reach into his head and tear everything out.

But Poe had gotten away. Finn broke him out, and they made it back to the Resistance, and they kept fighting, and – he should be okay. There’s a constant sense of unreality: he must be mistaken, because just a few weeks ago he was fine, and this kind of thing doesn’t happen to him. 

He re-reads the list of side effects.

_Headache_ , it says. No kidding. _Sleep problems_. _Depressed mood_. _Anxiety_.

_Deterioration of impulse control._

This time, it’s shame that hits him. And anger.

“Leia – it wasn’t – I knew what I was doing when I went around Vice Admiral Holdo,” he insists. He’s not going to – to _hide_ behind some diagnosis. You take responsibility for your actions if you’re in the Resistance, even if those actions are, you know, mutiny. “There’s…” 

Okay, _There’s nothing wrong with me_ is clearly not accurate. 

“I knew what I was doing,” he repeats again.

She doesn’t challenge him, just asks, “Would you have done the same things again?”

Instead of answering, he checks the readouts for the hyperdrive. He’s not stalling, he’s just being cautious. He’s heard stories.

“Fixing Finn’s jacket with S-foil staples… that was probably a mistake,” he allows.

He can feel Leia watching him steadily.

He’s not one to second-guess himself; you can’t in the cockpit, or you’ll be paralyzed with indecision. Once you’ve committed, you carry out the battle plan. But now, when he thinks back to the _Raddus_ without the urgency of the First Order riding their asses, the details start to stick out at him. 

Dozens of attempted desertions, morale at an all-time low – apparently ignored by an experienced Vice Admiral, one Leia herself trusted. Withholding nearly all information about logistically complicated escape plans not just from demoted commanders, but from logistics and the entire command staff. 

Even then he could tell the whole situation was _wrong_. Didn’t make sense. 

It _still_ doesn’t make sense, but now he recognizes it as what it was: an incomplete picture.

“Not… not without more information,” he says. 

“We thought there was a spy.”

Poe turns his head too quickly. 

“We had suspicions when they found us so quickly after Takodana,” Leia continues. “And then – when they were following us through hyperspace—”

Poe’s head thumps back against the seat. Ow, mistake.

“That’s why she didn’t tell anyone what was going on,” he groans. “A spy was _way_ more likely than some experimental tech barely anyone’s heard of. She didn’t want to risk the escape plan leaking.” A thought stabs at him like one of BB-8’s electrodes. “You didn’t think _I_ —”

Leia gives him a withering look. 

“No, Poe, I didn’t think you were a spy,” she says. “But after Takodana our investigations led nowhere – for good reason, it turns out – and we had to take precautions.”

She sighs.

“We’d discussed it briefly with Gial,” she says. He suppresses a pang of loss for the Admiral; if he starts down that path, it's just going to remind him of everyone else they lost. Of all the people who followed him into the fight and didn't come back. 

“It was a calculated risk to keep it only to the highest levels of command,” Leia continues. “Before the evacuation, Amilyn argued that the paranoia – the loss of faith and trust in each other – it would be disastrous.”

“So when she took command, she played the cagey old Admiral card,” says Poe. “Limit the distrust to her – and meanwhile, she can execute the escape plan under cover of a panicked retreat.”

“Yes.”

“Until I ruined it.” He rubs his face. 

It’s just – he’s always relied on his instincts. But he’d never thought what went into them – faith in the people giving orders, years of experience, the ability to analyze a situation quickly and _accurately_ – and now he doesn’t know how to tell if they were even working. It’s not just his mutiny. Could he have made better calls on Takodana? If they hadn’t lost as many pilots there, would they have come back from Starkiller with more than a fraction of their squadrons? If he’d been able to send someone else on search and rescue in the Hosnian system instead of Black Squadron, if they’d been on the comms with him when that dreadnought showed, would he have disobeyed a direct order from his General? Would he have needed to, if they were closer to full strength and prepared as they would ever get for the attack? 

He’d never send anyone to do anything he wouldn’t do himself. But they’d lost so many people anyway, on his orders. He’d almost had to listen to Finn and Paige’s sister die. He could have lost BB-8. The Resistance had almost been wiped out. And now he doesn’t know if any of his plans were the right call.

No, that's still not right. _Get your head out of the cockpit, Poe._

“I called her a coward,” he says, because that’s the one thing he _definitely_ knows he was wrong about. He hopes Holdo hadn’t felt like this. Well, not _exactly_ like this, she probably would have gone back to the med bay like she was supposed to after some Sith wannabe punched holes in her mind. 

But she’d made her plans based on faulty information, and had to salvage them even after circumstances left a dreadnought-sized hole in them, and then had to watch everyone fly into a deathtrap anyway. No one could make the right call when there were no good calls to make. You just did the best you could.

One corner of Leia’s mouth pulls up. “She didn’t take it personally,” she says. “You’ll get used to it.”

“I’ll get used to – you still want me to take command?” Poe looks at her incredulously. “I committed _mutiny_.” 

“Yes; it was very well-organized,” says Leia. “That’s not what I meant when I said we needed more leadership, but maybe I should have been more specific, given your condition.”

“That’s funny,” says Poe. “That’s very funny.” He looks away from her, down at the computer displays. Still flying smoothly, against all odds. “General, I can’t promise I wouldn’t have made those decisions even if I was fine. I don’t… I don’t _know_.”

Poe’s never had to do this before. Not lose – Jakku hadn’t been his finest moment, for example. And he’s been dressed down by several commanding officers and mostly deserved it.

He’s just never had to do those things at the same time. His risks had always paid off before. He’s never won and had it cost him – had it cost _everyone else_ – more than the victory might be worth. He’s never had to stand before someone he respected, a trail of destruction in his wake, with nothing but empty hands and uncertainty.

“No,” says Leia calmly. “I don’t know, either.”

“Then shouldn’t I be court-martialed?”

“If you should be, then I _definitely_ should be,” says Leia, and continues over his protests, “Depriving personnel of necessary medical attention constitutes torture.”

“I’ve had worse.”

“I know that,” says Leia. “It put you in medical, and I pulled you out and stuffed you in an X-Wing.”

He doesn’t know what to say to that. He feels, strongly, that it’s not her fault. No one forced him into that cockpit. It was his decision.

But it was Leia’s decision to keep him there and accept the consequences. He trusts her more than anyone, and now she’s saying… well, that they have the same problem. That there was a crisis, and they acted, and it went all cock-eyed, and now the people who trusted them can all fit onto this one small ship and there’s no telling whether that’s better or worse than if they hadn’t acted at all.

He shuts his eyes and rubs at his temples. It doesn’t help, but it was worth a shot.

They snap open again when a tinny alarm goes off – one of the control panels on the co-pilot’s side. He begins to reach for it, but Leia looks at it, rolls her eyes, and expertly thumps her fist against the top of the panel. The alarm shuts off.

“You know what the reward is for a job well done?” she asks as he settles back in his seat.

He snorts at the familiar question. “A harder job.” 

“Yes,” she says. “And when you’re the leader, it’s the reward for a job poorly done as well. Because the only other option is to step aside and pray someone else takes care of it.” She looks at him. “Could you do that?”

He sighs. “And you’re absolutely sure we just can’t blow everything up?”

She gives him a very speaking look.

They both fall silent. He’s started to blink heavily when a burst of noise makes him jerk his head around. The _Falcon’_ s still flying true, but it sounded like the intake pipes are tearing free and—

He catches Leia watching him, an eyebrow raised.

“You… didn’t hear that, did you,” he asks.

She leans over and helpfully highlights the list of side effects on his data pad. _Sensory shock_. Right.

“Get some rest, Poe,” she says. “We’ll need you when you’re better.”

He lets her take the controls and tucks himself next to BB-8. He falls asleep to the hum of the ship as it slips through the folds of the galaxy. And to one or two hallucinatory explosions, his brain still trying to hop in the cockpit and blow stuff up.

It’s okay, though. He’ll get over it.

They’ve got work to do.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [Ginipig](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Ginipig/pseuds/Ginipig), beta extraordinaire!
> 
> [Exploding head syndrome is a real thing (no, seriously)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_head_syndrome). My friend developed it after she got a bad concussion, and while they’re not currently linked there’s so little research on the condition that 1) they can get away with calling it “exploding head syndrome” and 2) you probably can’t say there’s _not_ a correlation, so: ta-daaaaa.
> 
> Even though I appreciated the character development in TLJ, the writing for Poe and Holdo’s storyline was so sloppy it hurt me in my soul and (as is the case for like 90% of everything I write) I immediately started trying to fix it. Particularly, I was interested in finding _logical_ reasons why:
> 
> – an experienced vice admiral, in an organization so informal most people go by their first names, would not just tell her panicking crew that actually, they did have an escape plan
> 
> – an experienced military pilot would suddenly start second-guessing all his commanding officers, even when they have stellar records and/or he's personally loyal to them
> 
> – said commanding officers would react to this with “lol what a scamp” instead of anger or betrayal or brig time
> 
> That being said, I don't think my proposition is totally unsupported in the movie:
>
>> FINN: a battering ram cannon
>> 
>> POE, IN GENUINE CONFUSION: what
> 
> it fires pancake mix at sheep WHAT DO YOU THINK IT DOES, POE, THE NAME IS LITERALLY THE THING
> 
>  [Also the staples are totally canon.](http://davetheshady.tumblr.com/post/168836777739/finnobliterateshux-rainbowrites-enjolrant)


End file.
